Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (122 page)

Eventually she called him back, asked him to swear to her that it would never happen again, that he would cut off all contact with Jessie. He swore that he would. The next month went decently well, but Anthony Barnhart

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after that things became strange. She was closed-off, didn’t want to hang out, became a recluse. She called him in tears a few nights since she had seen him, waking him from sleep in his dorm room. A conversation he will always remember. She had said, “I’m sorry I’m so depressed… I hate being like this, so broken that I’m unable to speak. I’m sorry to hurt you like this.”

His heart began pounding like a stallion. “Hurt me?”

“I’m depressed, and I can’t be the girlfriend you need me to be.”

“Kira.” He searched for the words to say, suddenly wide awake. “I know what it’s like to be in the hell you’re in now. I know it so well. I know you can’t control it. I need you to know that I’m going to be here through it, and I will hold you when you hurt.”

His words didn’t seem to have an impact. “I feel like I’m dead. I’ve gone numb. I am so afraid of…
everything
. I wish I could trust you, but… I don’t know how.”

“I know you can trust me, Kira. I’m not like the other guys. I don’t know… I don’t know how to make you see that.”

“This was supposed to be different.
We
were supposed to be different. You weren’t going to be like all those other guys, and you’re not, but to me, that’s what you’ve been, and I can’t make sense of that. If it’s not you, then is it me?”

“Kira. Listen to me.
It’s not you
.” He was sitting up in bed now, cradling the phone tightly against his chin. “We have things to work on. I wish we could just go back and do it all over again. We’ve made mistakes—hell, everyone does—but we can’t take them back. I’m trying to do everything I can think of to make you realize that I’m not like all the rest, that you can trust me, that I care so madly and deeply for you, with every ounce of the blood that runs through my veins… even if sometimes I fail to show it.”

“I’m just confused,” she confessed, her tears subsiding. “I don’t know how you took that, but don’t think I meant it like that.” He honestly had no idea what she was talking about. “I just want to know what it all means… Why we fight, and why sometimes we can’t stand each other, and why part of me screams that this relationship isn’t right, but at the same time I don’t have the willpower to let go, because there’s something about you that just… possesses me.”

∑Ω∑

They are both moaning now, groaning together, and her scream shakes the walls of the house as she comes, and then he withdraws, grabs himself and gasps, ejaculates onto the inside curve of her right leg. He collapses onto the sofa next to her. Both of them are panting and sweating, looking into one another’s eyes, knowing that their affection is directed towards others. He reaches over to hold her, to cuddle, but she crawls to the opposite end of the sofa. He watches her, and then she curls into a fetal position upon the couch, and she begins to cry.

VI

He wants to hold her, he wants to cuddle. He moves towards her across the couch, to comfort her, feeling the weight of guilt and shame bearing upon him. She won’t let him console her, gets up off the sofa. She grabs her clothes, quiet now, the tears silent but steadily trickling down her cheeks. The man covers himself with one of the sofa’s pillows, and he tries to think of something to say, anything to keep her by his side. He is spent, tired, but he wants to hold her naked, wants the two of them to Anthony Barnhart

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kiss and cuddle and even become one once more. But he can’t think of anything worth saying: his tongue is tied, but he wants it to be tied with hers. He can only watch as she carries her clothes to the master bedroom, opens the door, sniffles, looks back at him, and goes inside, shutting the door. He hears it lock. He leans back on the couch and looks at the crackling fire. The flames are dying now, the embers throbbing in synch with his pulsating heart. A wounded, shattered, unfulfilled, weeping heart. He stares into that fire, and his lips tremble. He grabs the bottle of whiskey sitting on the coffee table, and he takes a burning draft, and leaning back naked in the sofa, he closes his eyes, and he remembers, the memory becoming a dream.

∑Ω∑

Kira was working Christmas Day, so he went to the CLADDAGH IRISH PUB in Newport to have a few drinks and study for his flight examination the next morning. The lights were dim, candles lit upon the walls, fires roaring in the scattered stone hearths, Irish folk music playing over the speakers. He sipped his nutty Irishman—two shots hazelnut liquor and Irish cream whiskey mixed in steamed milk—and went through maps and sketches and diagrams, studying the intricacies of the Boeing 777. He had arrived around 3:00 that afternoon, and the bar had been empty. As evening approached, people began thronging inside, and he found it difficult to concentrate. He put in some earplugs and listened to music and ordered another drink. He swiveled around in his chair and peered out over the sea of faces, and that was when he saw her: she had entered with several other women, and they were dressed in swooning dresses and doused in makeup. His eyes were drawn down to her skinny legs and the red high-heel shoes. Something within him sparked, and his face flushed red, and he swiveled his chair back around, hunkered down over the counter, stared at the textbook—the statistics for the engines faded to a blur—and waited for his drink. The feeling rose quietly, refusing to subside, something burning, craving, inside him. He knew what he wanted, and his hands shook. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, tried to remember Kira: but her face faded into the sound of high-heels approaching.

The conversation had started off slow, but he had a few more drinks. This was her going-away party: she was boarding a plane tomorrow morning for a trip out to Boulder, Colorado, where she was going to work at a printing company as an editor. They ended up sitting at a table away from the other women, and he’d had a few too many shots. He kept bothering the waiter, asking for more whiskey and bourbon. They drank together, and her words would always be seared into the back of his mind:

“Is your plan to get me drunk and then take advantage of me?”

He had smiled, a wicked smile. “Oh, I’ve seen you’ve done this before?”

She had playfully bit her lip.

They both knew what they wanted.

He stepped outside to have a cigarette, to try and compose himself. He leaned over the railing facing the Ohio River. A casino-boat with its sparkling neon lights and passengers crowding the railings while holding wine and beers in their hands passed beneath one of the arching bridges.
Think of Kira. Think of her right now.

The cigarette ember burned between his fingers.

The smoke filled his lungs.

None of it helped.

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He heard her coming towards him. He turned away from the railing. She moved up next to him, wrapped herself around the railing, stared out. He turned around and continued smoking, facing the water, too.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she cooed.

“Yes,” he said.

Quietness.

“Do you ever wonder?” she asked.

He looked at her, the moon’s reflection off the water dancing in her eyes. “Wonder?”

“Yes.” She turned, faced him, blew golden strands of hair from her eyes.

“Do I ever wonder?” he repeated.

“Do you?”

“Wonder about what?”

“Don’t play these games with me.”

“I don’t know what game.”

She stepped forward, grabbed his hand. “Do you ever wonder about us?”

His mouth suddenly went dry, and his voice crackled: “Yes.”

VII

He awakes to the sound of birds outside. His eyes slowly open, and he licks chapped lips. The fire in the hearth has gone out, and dismembered rays of sunshine are coming in through the wooden planks over the windows. He is lying naked on the couch, torn from the dream, and he tries to recollect what has happened. For a moment he wonders if it was
all
a dream, every moment of it. But he knows that it happened, that he and Sarah had done the unthinkable, had tried to escape their pain in the warm embrace of their naked bodies—and that this search for escapism had ladled out nothing but shame.

He sits up on the couch and rubs his eyes, reaches for the bottle of whiskey.
No
.

He sets it down, stands, aches. He is lightheaded, nearly falls over, recovering from last night’s drunken debauchery. He leans against the stone fireplace and takes several deep breaths. He moves away from the fireplace and gathers his clothes. He dresses and stumbles over to the door leading to the master bedroom, knocks. “Sarah.” He repeats her name again: “Sarah.” No response. He imagines she is sleeping, coiled up in the sheets. “I’m going to make coffee,” he says through the door.

They had brought the coffee equipment from the old farmhouse, and the man goes outside, smokes a cigarette on the front porch, and then carries the coffee maker and a bag of ground coffee from the MERCEDES into the house. Mud clings to the soles of his boots. He notices there are no footprints in the mud: the house had been unvisited overnight.
We were loud; it’s surprising we didn’t attract
attention.

He fixes the coffee in the kitchen, having pried the planks from all the windows, allowing sunlight to enter. He watches the coffee filling the pot, tries to formulate the words he will speak to comfort Sarah, to apologize. He doesn’t know what to say. Sometimes saying nothing is the best route to walk: had he told Kira of what happened that night with Jessie, she would have broken up Anthony Barnhart

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with him then and there. He loved Kira, but he had been stupid with Jessie. Being honest would have simply forsaken that love. Honesty is not always the best policy, the man is sure, but he wants to say something—anything—to Sarah. He doesn’t want to do it again, and he doesn’t want there to be an awkward tension between them.

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath.

He wishes he would’ve not succumbed to her advances. He wishes he would have used his balls in quite a different way and not fallen to her seduction.

Seduction
.

“Shit.” She’s not like that, and he knows it. He speaks to no one but himself: “We were both lonely. We were both vulnerable. We were both stupid. No one’s to blame more than the other.”
And
we need to talk about this
. The coffee is finished. He rummages through the cupboards, finds two coffee cups, and pours the coffee.

∑Ω∑

“Kiss me.”

He was frozen in place, the cigarette between his fingers, eyes staring across the river.

“Kiss me,” she repeated.

He gritted his teeth, wrenched his eyes shut. “No.”

She was still holding his hand, and she squeezed it tightly in hers. “Please.”

He shook his head, stern and resolute. “Kira… She told me not…”

He couldn’t even formulate his words.

“Kira’s not here,” Jessie said, slowly moving in closer.

Her body was closer to his.

The wind came up off the water, but her body broke their coldness. Her warmth so close.

The scent of strawberry shampoo in her hair.

The tingling heat of her breath against his neck.

“Kiss

me.”

And then he found himself turning.

He found himself looking up.

His mind screamed at him:
Stop!

But he didn’t care.

The two of them looked at one another, and his hand shook in hers. She pressed her body against him, and the tips of their noses touched. He watched her lips, their quick and precise and beautiful movements:

“Kiss

me.”

The tongue forming words behind those lips.

That tongue, tantalizing, anticipating.

His own lips quivered in exhilaration.

“She isn’t here,” Jessie said, their lips threatening to collide. His own lips quivered in exhilaration.

“She isn’t here,” Jessie said, their lips threatening to collide. He promised himself Kira would never know.

This time, he wouldn’t tell her.

She didn’t need to know.

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And he kissed her under the moonlight.

∑Ω∑

He knocks on the door to the master bedroom. “Sarah?” No reply. “I made coffee.”

Still nothing.

He grabs the doorknob and twists. It opens. He pushes the door wide, revealing the master bedroom. Sunlight is coming in through the cracks in the boards, and birds are perched on the large oak outside, their soft melodies filling the room. The bed is made, unruffled, unused. The man’s eyes are drawn to the antique vanity.

His breath escapes him, but somehow three words pour forth: “Oh my God.”

She is sitting in the chair facing the vanity, her back to him, the shoulder-blades pressed against bluish-purple, blood-deprived skin. Her head is bowed, as if in prayer, and across the mirror is a great wash of dried blood, molded into the shape of a wretched grin, which had inched its way down from its arc of splatter in great rivulets, spattering onto the vanity’s counter. The man moves forward slowly, around the side of the bed next to the vanity, and he sees that her front is covered with blood: the blood had flowed down over her breasts, down her stomach, between her legs, and pooled in a gelatinous puddle amidst her stone-cold feet. On the counter of the vanity are open containers of old makeup, but her face is hidden in the shadows. The bloodied bayonet is still clenched in the icy fingers of her right hand. He stands on the opposite side of the bed watching her. He feels nothing. His heart beats sluggishly behind his ribs. Hers doesn’t beat at all.

The man leaves the room and shuts the door. He turns and faces the living area, the fireplace filled with its spent and dusty embers. That sofa where they had kissed, passionately embraced, where they had become one. It had been magical, something straight out of the greatest of all fairy-tales. It had been something that made the stars align and the galaxies collide. And now she is gone—she is gone because of what he did. She is gone because of the shame she felt in betraying her love for Patrick. She is gone because of her decision to leave him alone.